dove tail setting

[pizz]

I thank you all for the ideas that you shared. And Freeman, especially for risking the wrath (but hey, there's been none!). John, I probably am overthinking.
I know that I am going to get this done.

[tippie53]

If you need to add a few shims , that is ok keep er tight

[Dan Bombliss]

If it helps at all, I'm sure John has probably already covered it for you, but I'll chime in for a second to tell you what was helpful for me.

First of all, it may or may not be too late, but don't touch the actually dovetail its self, until you have a good neck to body fit, your neck angle is set, and your centerline is set. If you need to bring your neck angle up a bit, the sand paper trick is great for both slowly bringing it down slowly and giving you a near invisible joint. Just get a few strips of sandpaper, probably about 180grit or so, not too crucial, put it under the heal, flush against the bottom of the fingerboard and pull it out the bottom with light pressure on the joint. Then your basically sanding the heal to contour the body. Since when you do it the sandpaper makes contact with the bottom corner longer than the top of the heel by the fingerboard, it will bring the neck back.

The other thing that is nice, so that you don't have to mess with the dovetail joint much, is once you have it to the point to where you need to shim it, and either the bottom of the dovetail or the top of the dovetail is loose, which you can tell by pushing the neck in snug and seeing where it rocks, you can make a tapered shim to fix it. Instead of cutting away at the dovetail in the neck, just put a shim in and taper it with a file or something, and put the thicker part where the neck is loose. Yesterday I just did a neck reset on my first built guitar and the bottom of the dovetail was loose when the top of the dovetail was tight, so I put a tapered shim in there, thicker at the bottom than the top, and when I snugged it up, the neck didn't rock anymore. Just a nice trick, since if you mess up the cut on the shim, you can use a new shim, but if you mess up the cut on the dovetail, in progressively gets thinner.

-Dan

[Ken Hundley]

I have noticed, when flossing the neck joint, that it helps to back the sandpaper with packing tape. Strong, slippery stuff that keeps the paper from tearing its self apart as you pull it out of the joints, especially the corners of the sandpaper.

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Good tip Ken, I have had that problem. I'll try the packaging tape next time.

Kevin

[Dan Bombliss]

The only one con I've heard about something like the packaging tape is, if the body or the finish is relatively uneven or lumpy or which ever, it's a bit harder to get a uniform contour with thicker paper. with the thicker the paper, the radius will be different when it rides the lumps or dips or what ever on the body.

Which I'll definitely try the packaging tape on the back of sandpaper, and as long as the gap seals up, no problems. I'd think you'd have to try using it and if the gaps don't go away, you'd have to double check to make sure thinner paper does the trick or not.

-Dan